Tilak Had Described Jinnah As an Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity
By
Sudheendra Kulkarni
02nd August
2020
One of the
most intriguing political relationships in the history of India’s freedom
struggle is that between Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Mohammed Ali Jinnah.
This association is iconoclastic on both sides. It punctures the leftist
allegation that Tilak was a Hindu communalist. This depiction of Tilak can also
be found in many accounts of the history of Pakistan by Pakistani scholars.
This comradeship also busts the myth that Jinnah, who later became the
architect of Pakistan, was a Muslim communalist.
Indian freedom fighter Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Muslim League leader
Mohammed Ali Jinnah. | Wikipedia
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Remarkably,
this association developed at a time when both the Indian National Congress, of
which Tilak was a towering leader until his death on August 1, 1920, and the
All India Muslim League, which later raised the demand for India’s Partition,
were themselves exploring a collaborative association to demand from the
British self-rule for Indians.
Even more
remarkably, it was a time when Jinnah, the most promising young lawyer and
nationalist Muslim politician in Bombay in the first two decades of the last
century, was a member, simultaneously, of both the Congress and the Muslim
League. He had joined the Congress in 1896, when he returned from England to
Bombay to start his law practice.
In 1906, he
attended the Calcutta session as secretary to Dadabhai Naoroji, the “Grand Old
Man” of India’s freedom struggle, who was then president of Congress. He would
take membership of the Muslim League much later, in 1913. He viewed himself as
a bridge between the two communities, Hindus and Muslims, and also between the
two Indian parties, Congress and the Muslim League, pursuing the common goal of
national independence.
Gopal
Krishna Gokhale, his mentor and a respected leader of the “moderate” faction of
the Congress – Tilak was a leader of the “militant” wing – had described Jinnah
as “an ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity”. Jinnah himself had expressed the
desire to become “the Muslim Gokhale”.
In his book
Jinnah and Tilak: Comrades in the Freedom Struggle, AG Noorani, a prolific
scholar, quotes Kanji Dwarkadas, a close friend of Jinnah in Bombay: “The two
great political centres in Bombay at that time [c. 1916] were Sardar Griha,
where Tilak lived and Jinnah’s chambers in the High Court. All political roads
led to these two places for organisation, consultation and decision.”
Noorani
continues: “Theirs was not what is known as ‘drawing room politics. They
plunged deep into mass politics. Thousands of leaflets and pamphlets were
published week after week. After dinner meetings were held at Kalbadevi and
Mandvi and every fortnight big public meeting were held at Shantaram’s Chawl,
Girgaum, addressed by, among others, Jinnah, Tilak, Khaparde, Khadilkar, NC
Kelkar and BG Horniman, an Englishman who edited the nationalist daily Bombay
Chronicle. Meetings were also held at places like Mulji Jetha Cloth Market and
China Bagh.”
AG Noorani’s ‘Jinnah and Tilak: Comrades in the Freedom Struggle’.
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According
to Dwarkadas, “The Shantaram Chawl meetings were a bugbear to Lord Willingdon
[Governor of Bombay Presidency, which then comprised Sind as well]. For the
first time in the history of political agitation, the masses were approached
and were made politically conscious…Omar Sobani, Shankarlal Banker and I met
Jinnah daily in his chambers to arrange our-day-to-day programme of political
propaganda.”
Here is an
account of Jinnah’s speech at a public meeting in Shantaram Chawl in praise of
Tilak, when the people of Bombay gave him a send-off at the beginning of his
long visit to England in 1918. As president of the Indian Home Rule League,
Tilak was going there to press the case of India’s Swaraj.
“A mass
meeting of about 15,000 men was held under the presidency of Mr. Jinnah in the
spacious compound of Shantaram Chawl on Tuesday evening to give a hearty
send-off to Mr. Tilak and his party. The Hon. Jinnah, in the course of his
remarks, said that no man was more fitted to voice the opinions of the
democracy here to the English people than Mr. Tilak who had devoted his whole
life to the cause of his country. Let it be quite clear, he said, that the
demand for the immediate step towards the establishment of the Home Rule was
the united demand of the people. It was the birth right of every man and that
was the principle of self-determination.”
Addressing
the same meeting, Tilak gave a rousing call for Indian unity. “Stand by us, now
and ever like men, resolute men, against the temptation that would be offered
by the [British] bureaucracy. Accept no compromise, no barter, no change in the
matter. If you accept it, we all will be humiliated and laughed at. The
bureaucracy might try to create a split amongst us. Be careful, attentive and
resolute to stand by the Congress Scheme.”
There is
another account of a public meeting at Shantaram Chawl, on May 31, 1919, at
which Mahatma Gandhi gave tribute to Tilak. The meeting had been organised for
the purpose of appreciating Tilak’s services to India and for calling upon the
people to contribute to the expenses incurred by him in his case against Sir
Valentine Chirol. The following is a full translation of Gandhiji’s speech in
Gujarati.
“I am
thankful to the organisers of the meeting for asking me to preside. The goal of
every thinking Indian must be the same, though the methods for its attainment
may be different and it is a matter known to all that my ways differ from Mr
Tilak’s. And yet I would wish to heartily associate myself with every occasion
to pay a tribute to his great services to the country, his self-sacrifice, and
his learning and with the present occasion in especial. The nation does not
honour him any the less for his defeat in his case against Sir Valentine
Chirol. It honours him, if that were possible, all the more, and this meeting
is but a token of it. I have come to offer my hearty support to it.
“Truly
speaking, I am in no love with fighting in law courts. Victory there does not
depend on the truth of your case. Any experienced vakil will bear me out that
it depends more on the judge, the counsel, and the venue of the court. In
English there is a proverb that it is always the man with the longest purse
that wins. And there is a good deal of truth in this, as there is exaggeration
in it. The Lokamanya’s defeat therefore made me only wish he was a satyagrahi
like me, so that he would have saved himself the bother of victory or defeat.
And when I saw that far from losing heart at the result of his case, far from
being disappointed, he faced the English public with cool resignation and
expressed his views to them with equal fearlessness, I was proud of him. He has
been in his life acting to the very letter up to what he has believed to be the
essential teaching of the Gita. He devotes himself entirely to what he believes
to be his karma, and leaves the result thereof to God. Who could withhold
admiration from one so great?”
Jinnah, in his early political years, was known as ‘an ambassador of
Hindu-Muslim unity’. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
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Even in
Defeat, A Hero
Here we
should digress a little and devote a few lines to the Chirol case and its
significance in Tilak’s life. Sir Ignatius Valentine Chirol was a British
journalist who passionately defended the British empire. “It is impossible that
we should ever concede to India the rights of self-government,” he wrote. To
buttress this belief, he indulged in vilification of the leaders of India’s
freedom struggle, especially Tilak, whom he called the “Father of Indian
Unrest”. For example, he described the gymnastic societies started by Tilak as
“juvenile bands of dacoits to swell the coffers of Swaraj”.
Chirol’s
book in some ways was similar to Catherine Mayo’s Mother India, a vile and
derogatory description of India and her freedom movement, which Gandhij
dismissed as “a drain inspector’s report”.
Tilak filed
a civil suit against Chirol in London for the deprecatory comments on him in
Chirol’s book Indian Unrest. Tilak lost the case. The British Government had
hoped that his defeat would dent his prestige and popularity in India. The
contrary happened. The legal battle further boosted Tilak’s fame. Rabindranath
Tagore, a great admirer of Tilak, observed: “You cannot purify the sacrificial
fire or the sacred waters of the Ganga.”
The Bombay
Chronicle, edited by the legendary journalist BG Horniman, wrote: “Who cares
what the British jury and judge said about our beloved Lokamanya? Their
pronouncements are powerless to dethrone him from the loving hearts of the
people.”
The Chirol
case, and Tilak’s long stay of over 18 months in England both to fight the case
and also to propagate the cause of India’s freedom, left him under a very heavy
burden of debt. This is what prompted Gandhiji and others to start a drive to
collect donations from people to provide financial support to Tilak. Such was
the response that on May 22, 1920, a purse of Rs 325,000 – a lot of money in
those days – was presented to him in Poona.
He was
seriously ill at the time, with just over two months of life left for him. He
thanked the people and said, “By your generosity you have literally bought my
body and soul.” Then, in a choked voice, he added, “Plainly you want me to go
on working for you and, of course, I have no option now.”
A rare photograph of Tilak, Jinnah and Gandhi addressing a meeting at
Shantaram Chawl in Bombay. Credit: illustrated biography of Tilak by Lokmanya
Tilak Vichar Manch, Pune
-----
To return
to the narrative about the Tilak-Jinnah comradeship – which came to symbolise
Hindu-Muslim solidarity for India’s freedom – at least two rare photographs of
large mass meetings at Shantaram Chawl, which typified the middle-class and
working-class habitat in Bombay a hundred years ago, have survived the ravages
of time. One shows Tilak and Jinnah. The other shows Tilak and Jinnah, along
with Mahatma Gandhi. Not far from Girgaum, and towards its North, was
Girangaon, the hub of textile mills in and around Parel. Tilak would regularly
address meetings of trade unions there. And between Girgaum and Girangaon were
– and still are – Muslim-dominated areas such as Byculla, Bhendi Bazar and
Nagpada, with absolutely no physical barrier between Hindu and Muslim
localities.
Tilak’s
Sardar Grih in Girgaum, a modest private guest house in which he rented a room
whenever he came to Bombay, itself was in close vicinity of Anjuman-i-Islam,
the oldest Muslim educational institution in India founded in 1874, a year
before the establishment of the Alilgarh Muslim University, originally known as
the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College, by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan.
Its founder
was Badruddin Tyabji, a great patriot who was president of the Indian National
Congress at its third session in Madras in 1897. As a judge of the Bombay High
Court, he was known for his courage and impartiality, as became clear in his
granting bail to Tilak in a sedition case in 1897 after it had been rejected
thrice by others. Tyabji, unlike Sir Syed, urged Muslims to join the Congress
so that the interests of Muslims and Hindus could be advanced jointly.
Incidentally, Jinnah, who too held the same view, regarded Tyabji as his
mentor, and once told him that there was “nothing that I shall follow more readily
than your advice.”
A
‘Composite’ Patriotism
All these
things must have influenced Tilak’s mind, broadening his views on Indian
nationalism. In an important speech on “Patriotism”, which he delivered in
Bellary, Karnataka, in May 1905, he said, “Patriotism must be composite. The
limits [of patriotism] must be widened.” Evidently, Tilak was saying that India
was neither a Hindu Nation, as propounded by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh,
founded five years after his death, nor a Muslim patron, which later became the
demand of the Muslim League, under the leadership of Jinnah, to be carved out
in Muslim-majority parts of India. In the same speech, Tilak elaborated his
concept of secular Indian nationalism, which is nothing but “composite
nationalism”, as he called it.
“When you
go to consider a question whether India can be a nation, various considerations
crop up in connection with it. One man says that unless the whole of India
comes to profess one faith or unless they all become Christians, or Mohamedans or
Hindus for the matter of that; there cannot arise one nation from the
heterogeneous communities. Another man says that it is our social customs that
keep us behind and down and that unless we cast them away there is no
salvation. Our industrial friend says that unless the Indian industries are
revived and unless the country accumulates more wealth – for wealth is power –
there can be no salvation for India. Each man has his own view and pushes it
forward. But when we consider the subject from all points of view it must be
admitted that all these views are more or less one sided. When we consider the
question of nationality and national progress we cannot afford to look at it
only from one standpoint of view. We must look for progress all along the line and
understand the mutual relations of the different parts so that in our
enthusiasm for one we may not kill or come in conflict with the others.”
Anyone who
reads these lines now will know how relevant they are for strengthening the
unity of today’s multi-faith India and for promoting harmony in our
multi-community society as it continues to grapple with Hindu-Muslim tensions
on the one hand and, on the other, with the tension between economic progress
in an era of globalisation and an urge to preserve our culture and traditions.
Tilak addressing a meeting at Shantaram Chawl in Bombay. Credit:
Sudheendra Kulkarni
----
Jinnah’s
views on “composite” Indian nationalism in the first three decades of the last
century echoed those of Tilak. At the 22nd session of the Indian National
Congress in Calcutta in 1906, which was being held around the same time as the
founding session of the Muslim League in Dhaka, Jinnah said, “Muhammadans can
equally stand on this common platform and pray for our grievances being remedied
through the programme of the National Congress…The foundation upon which the
Indian National Congress is based is that we are all equal.”
Jinnah
strongly believed in the idea of a “union of the two great communities in
India”. In a speech at Anjuman-i-Islam on January 20, 1913, he regarded it a
necessity for the Hindus and Muslims “to combine in one harmonious union for
the common good.” Presciently, he described this as the “problem of all
problems that the statesman in India has to solve before any true advance or
real purpose can be achieved”.
It is not
out of place here to recall what Jinnah said while presiding over a meeting of
the Gurjar Sabha in January 1915 to welcome the return to India of Mahatma
Gandhi from South Africa. “He impressed upon Gandhi the importance of such
unity. The South African question, in which Gandhi had been so actively
involved, was to Jinnah the first issue “on which the two sister communities
stood together in absolute union”.
And “it was
that frame of mind, that state, that condition which they had to bring about
between the two communities, when most of their problems…would be easily
solved. That…was one problem of all the problems of India – namely how to bring
about unanimity and cooperation between the two communities so that the demands
of India may be made absolutely unanimously.”
What a
misfortune for India it was that no statesman – neither Mahatma Gandhi nor
Jinnah – could ensure that the “two sister communities stood in absolute union”
when the time came for the British to leave this land.
A
perceptive account of Jinnah’s admiration for Tilak can be found in the
autobiography Roses in December of Mohammedali Currim Chagla, the great jurist,
who served as Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court from 1948 to 1958, and
also later as India’s education minister. As a young lawyer, Chagla worked in
Jinnah’s chamber. Tilak was his childhood hero. He idolised Jinnah and was also
a member of the Muslim League although he quit the party after it started
espousing the cause of Pakistan as a separate Muslim nation. His account is
pertinent to this essay that it deserves to be reproduced here in extenso.
This is
what he writes: “I might mention here that during my long association with him,
I found that Jinnah always showed the greatest respect and regard for Tilak.
Even when he was in the process of changing his political stand and becoming
more and more communal, I never remember his ever saying anything which was
derogatory of Tilak. Two persons in public life for whom Jinnah showed the
greatest respect were Gokhale and Tilak. He had hard and harsh things to say
about Gandhiji, Nehru and others; but as far as Gokhale and Tilak were
concerned, Jinnah had the most profound admiration and respect for them and for
their views.”
Tilak’s rented room on the 4th floor in Sardar Grih, Girgaum in then
Bombay. Credit: Sudheendra Kulkarni
-----
Chagla
continues: “It is surprising that there should have been so much in common
between Jinnah and Tilak. I understand that the regard Jinnah had for Tilak was
reciprocated by Tilak. Jinnah told me that when as a junior he was reading in
the chamber of Lowndes – Sir George Lowndes, who afterwards became a member of
the Viceroy’s Legislative Council, and later still a member of the Privy Council
–Lowndes’ opinion was once sought regarding some speech that Tilak had
delivered. There was going to be a conference, and Lowndes asked Jinnah whether
he had read the brief, and what he thought about it. Jinnah replied that he had
not touched the brief and would not look at it as he wanted to keep himself
free to criticise the government for prosecuting a great patriot like Tilak.
Jinnah said that Lowndes was amused at the indignation and enthusiasm of his
young junior.”
Chagla
narrates another incident that highlights Jinnah’s respect for Tilak. “Jinnah
also told me that after Justice Davar sentenced Tilak to six years’ rigorous
imprisonment the Government conferred a knighthood upon Davar, and the Bar
Association of the High Court of Bombay wanted to give him a dinner. A circular
went round asking those who wanted to join the dinner to sign it. When the
circular came to Jinnah, he wrote a scathing note that the Bar should be
ashamed to want to give a dinner to a judge who had obtained a knighthood by
doing what the Government wanted, and by sending a great patriot to jail with a
savage sentence. It seems that Justice Davar came to know about this, and sent
for Jinnah in his chambers. He asked Jinnah how he thought Davar had treated
Jinnah in his court. Jinnah replied that he had always been very well treated.
Davar asked him next whether he had any grievance against him [Davar]. Jinnah
said he had none. Davar then asked: ‘Why did you write a note like this against
me?’ Jinnah replied that he wrote it because he thought it was the truth, and
however well Davar might have treated him he could not suppress his strong
feeling about the manner in which he had tried Tilak’s case. All this goes to
demonstrate the great regard which Jinnah had for Tilak, and also the courage
and the spirit of nationalism which Jinnah displayed as a young man.”
The front and back cover of M C Chagla’s ‘Roses in
December’.
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“By a happy
stroke of fortune, I myself came to be concerned years later with this trial of
Tilak by Davar in 1906. As Chief Justice of Bombay I had a tablet put up
outside what used to be the Sessions Court in the High Court of Bombay on July
15, 1956.” In the speech he delivered on the occasion, Chagla said:
“There is
no honour and no distinction which I have valued more than the privilege of
being able to unveil the tablet to Lokamanya Tilak’s memory this morning. In
this very room on two occasions within the space of 12 years, Lokamanya Tilak
sat in the dock as an accused; and on two occasions he was convicted and
sentenced to a term of imprisonment. We have met here today to make atonement
for the suffering that was caused by these convictions to a great and
distinguished son of India. That disgrace tarnished our record and we are here
to remove that tarnish and that disgrace. It may be said that those convictions
were a technical compliance with justice; but we are here emphatically to state
that they were a flagrant denial of substantial justice. He was sentenced for
the crime of patriotism. He was sentenced because he loved his country more
than his life or his liberty. Ladies and gentlemen, the verdict that our
contemporaries passed on us, the verdict that our times passed on us, is not of
much value. We must always await the inevitable verdict of history; and the
inevitable verdict of history is that those two convictions are condemned as
having been intended to suppress the voice of freedom and patriotism, and the
action of Lokamanya Tilak has been justified as the right of every individual
to fight for his country. Those two convictions have gone into
oblivion-oblivion reserved by history for all unworthy deeds. The fame and
lustre of Tilak has grown and increased with the passage of time…”
“May I be
permitted a slight personal reminiscence. As a boy Tilak was always my hero. I
remember the day when he was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment in 1908, when
I was a school boy studying in a school at Dadar; and I remember serious riots
broke out in Parel; and so great was my anger and indignation at what happened
to Tilak, that I almost felt like joining the rioters; but I suppose my deep
law-abiding instinct prevented me from doing that. . . .”
In his
autobiography, Chagla adds: “Referring to myself as occupying the post of Chief
Justice, I said: “If today the High Court is functioning in a free India, if
there is an Indian presiding as the Chief Justice of this Court, let us
remember that it is due in no small measure to the suffering and sacrifice of
Tilak.’”
Chagla’s
action of unveiling the tablet in the Bombay High Court in honour of Tilak,
with an inscription of his immortal words he as a convict had uttered in the
court room in 1908, was subsequently criticised by some as an attempt to
introduce politics into the administration of justice. However, “I remain
unrepentant,” Chagla writes. “I think I did the right thing on behalf of myself
as the Chief Justice, of my brother judges and of the High Court. Justice
according to law becomes a rather empty and futile expression when you are
dealing with a much greater and a more exalted force like freedom or patriotism
and the love of one’s country. Therefore, without imputing motives to the
judges who did their duty according to their light in convicting and sentencing
Tilak, it was equally the duty of judges functioning in a free country to make
it clear that what constituted a crime in British times had become a positive
contribution to the freedom and progress of the country.”
Chagla
concludes with yet another personal reminiscence. “I should like to add as a
footnote to what I have written above that I myself met Tilak only once. This
was in London during the time I was at Oxford and he had come there in
connection with some litigation. If I remember right it was the Valentine
Chirol case. I went to see him in the house where he was staying, and although
I was a young student and he was a great national leader, he received me with
great courtesy and cordiality, and we discussed various topics for a long time.
I have no recollection now of the subjects we discussed, but I came away from
that interview with a feeling of deep admiration for the great qualities of
head and heart which Tilak possessed.”
It is well
known that, at its session in Surat in 1907, the Congress had suffered a
serious split between the “extremists” led by Tilak, Lajpat Rai, Bipan Chandra
Pal and Aurobindo Ghosh, and the “moderates” led by Gopal Krishna Gokhale,
Pherozeshah Mehta and Surendranath Banerjee. The former had been expelled from
the party.
The split
had caused much anguish to Jinnah. It so happened that Tilak, too, after his
release from Mandalay Jail in 1914, was keen on reconciliation. Tilak and
Jinnah worked together on this task. The result was not only that the divided
Congress re-united, but it also led to rare unity between the Congress and the
Muslim League in their simultaneous sessions in Lucknow in 1916.
After
Tilak’s death, Jinnah wrote a tribute in which he said:
“After his return from Mandalay, I came in closer contact with him and
Mr Tilak, who was known in his earlier days to be communalistic and stood for
Maharashtra, developed and showed broader and greater national outlook as he
gained experience. I believe, it was at the Bombay Presidency Provincial
Conference, over which I had the honour to preside, that the gulf, which was
created owing to the Surat Congress split, was bridged over and Mr Tilak and
his entire party once more came into the fold of the Indian National Congress
in 1915. Since then, Mr Tilak rendered yeoman services to the country and
played a very important part in bringing about the Hindu-Moslem unity which
ultimately resulted in the Lucknow Pact in 1916.”
In the
third and final part of this essay, we shall examine the Tilak-Jinnah Pact,
which, if its spirit had endured and guided India’s Freedom Struggle, could
have averted the tragic Partition in 1947.
Original
Headline: Tilak and Jinnah: A forgotten
friendship and symbol of Hindu-Muslim unity in colonial India
Source: The Scroll
URL: https://newageislam.com/interfaith-dialogue/tilak-had-described-jinnah-ambassador/d/122527